Barry Simons: CRIS Radio Reader Led A Life Of Adventure, Theatrics

Extraordinary Life

Barry Simons, a Tolland resident, was a reader at CRIS radio, a Windsor-based… (Photo courtesy of CRIS Radio )

March 15, 2013|By ANNE M. HAMILTON, Special to The Courant, The Hartford Courant

Barry Simons' resume was unusual, to say the least. It would reveal that he had raised a lion cub, performed in a circus, spent time as a London "Bobby" and had tea with the Queen. He was even given an honorary knighthood by a group in Australia; he then called himself "Sir Barry."

"We heard his stories, and we figured they were all fake," said Aline Hoffman, a longtime friend. "But they weren't. They were real."

Boxes of now-yellowed clippings confirm that, indeed, most of the stories Simons told had been documented. In a way, it didn't really matter. Simons was a master of the shaggy dog story that left his audience entranced.

Most recently, he read stories on CRIS radio, non-profit Connecticut station for people who have vision loss, learning disabilities or physical handicaps that prevent them from reading.

Simons, a proud British citizen who had lived in Tolland for the past two decades, died March 1 of complications from a perforated ulcer.

Simons, was born on Aug. 18, 1927, into a theatrical family in England. His father, Elkin Simons, owned a company that produced pantomimes, theatrical productions modeled on children's stories, like Aladdin or Cinderella, but with an edge.

"Neither farce, nor burlesque, but an art of their own," as Simons described it.

Unlike mime, the actors speak, and the slightly rowdy musical comedies are noisy and encourage audience participation. Known as "pantos," the productions date back to the 15th and 16th centuries and the Italian tradition of Commedia dell'Arte. The usual characters include a young male lead, a cross-dressing, campy older woman, a comic animal and a chorus figure who speaks to the audience.

The Simons company put on productions at Christmas and during the summer; by the time Simons was 10, he was on stage, and when he was 16, he was a stage manager. He was still in high school when World War II began, and was living in London during the Blitz, when Germans planes filled the sky nightly with terror and bombs.

He wanted to join the war effort, but he was only 16, so he lied his way into the Army by claiming he was 18. He joined a rifle brigade, trained as a sniper and participated in Operation Market Garden, an Allied military operation in the Netherlands and Germany in September 1944. He and hundreds of other troops swooped into the Dutch city of Nijmegen on gliders as millions of pounds of equipment and supplies were sent down by parachutes. The joint U.S.- British effort prevented the Nazis from capturing a key bridge, but Simons was captured by German forces. He escaped within a few days.

Later, he was among the first troops to liberate Bergen-Belsen, a Nazi concentration camp in southern Germany, in April 1945. (Simons can be seen fleetingly in footage of the camp at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.) He also participated in the Nuremberg trials, serving as part of a firing squad. For this task, the soldiers were given rifles — some loaded with bullets, others with blanks. This way, no one knew whether or not his shot had hit the target. As garrulous as Simons was, he rarely discussed this part of the war.

Simons spent several years after the war in Paris with the British Forces Network — an equivalent of the Voice of America — frequently broadcasting in French.

He returned to London to join the family business, which was renamed Elkin & Barry Simons Ltd. He worked with the company for about 20 years, until an arson fire destroyed the company's props, scripts and scenery.

At one point, he arranged with a friend who lived in Africa to procure him a lion cub — except that the cub was over 2 years old when Simons received it. Until then, all the lion roles in his theater company had been played by a man in a costume, but Simons wanted more realism. He trained the lion — as well as a young tiger — in Northumberland, in the north of England. He also trained a chimpanzee to drive a car.

"It scared the bejeezus out of his neighbors," said Gale Morganroth, a friend who saw several newspaper clippings confirming these tales.

At another point — an accurate chronology is difficult — Simons became a timekeeper and then an announcer for Silverstone, a famous British motorsports racetrack. He drove race cars for a short time, acted as a marshal for the race, and sponsored other racers.

After his theater career was halted by the fire, Simons became a London police officer, and then — as some people might say — he settled down. He first became an insurance broker and then an underwriter with Lloyd's of London. He worked hard, and in 1988, his colleagues urged him to go on a cruise to relax.